Why BlueFin Research?

We’re “business analysts” first. To stand out and be recognized as a value-added partner to our buy-side customers, BlueFin has taken a different approach to providing research services. Our premise is to focus on our strengths and not try to be something that we’re not.

To start, we consider ourselves more as “business analysts” than “research analysts.” Our analysts come from industry, where they have spent on average 20+ years perfecting their trade as seasoned sales and marketing professionals in various industry segments, including semiconductors, distribution, EMS, wireless, networking and storage. Their backgrounds make them very in-tune with the intricacies of the industries and companies that they follow. Because of their extensive industry backgrounds, we think we can provide insights about current business conditions and trends that are superior to those of most other sell-side research firms.

The investment world has changed. In our view, the “old model” of equity research – focused on lengthy reports, post-earning recaps, regurgitating the company line and providing highly subjective buy/sell recommendations – has become close to useless to the savvy investor. How value-added is a rating downgrade the day after a company reports disappointing financial results and the stock is down 20%? The real value-add is in providing objective and useful insights that offer a view of things to come.

Not only do we think that the old model of equity research has become antiquated, but information today is moving at warp speed, hurtling through websites, business news networks, financial blogs, smartphones, emails and instant messages, and there’s more of it than ever! Investors are looking to a research firm to give them an edge. At BlueFin, we provide that edge by delivering industry knowledge and insights that are not easy to get anywhere else.

Our approach to research. Bluefin’s research effort is best described as a mosaic approach, meaning that our objective is to collect as much insightful information we can about an industry and/or company to help us project underlying business conditions. In doing this, we try to dissect an industry segment and/or company “vertically” (macro trends down to the component level) and “horizontally” (a food chain approach analyzing supplier and customer inputs). Our goal is to be early at identifying inflection points in the business conditions of an industry segment or a company that should be value-added in our customer’s investment decisions. Our research efforts try to provide insights into the following:

“Big picture” market conditions:

• What’s the overall business sentiment in the marketplace. Is business improving, weakening or steady? Identify any anecdotal evidence indicating changing trends.
• What companies are standing out in terms of performing better or weaker than their competitors? Why?
• Are there changes in the competitive landscape?

Business trends:

• What are sales trend assumptions and how is it tracking?
• Customer activity: Placing, cancelling, pushing out, expediting orders?
• Insights about changing inventory levels: Changes in lead times? Changes in excess/shortage requirement?
• Insights on pricing trends: Price increases, decreases, special promotions?
• Changes in the competitive landscape: Who’s got a hot product? Why? Where are they winning? Who are they displacing?
• Changes in end-market exposure?

In our approach, research is analogous to assembling a puzzle, but with only some of the pieces. If you have enough of the right pieces and the pieces you’re missing are not too significant, you probably stand a good chance at deciphering what the picture is. This is not to say that your guess will always be right, but if you have a keen mind, you probably stand a better chance of figuring out the picture than if you only had one or two pieces of the puzzle.

Outsource your tech research to us. We think the best way for customers to use BlueFin is to treat us as an extension of their research team. Along with our distributed research notes/calls and scheduled conference calls, we work with customers on special projects that deliver unmatched due diligence. If you need to know what’s happening in a technology market or specific company, we can find the answers for you.

Choose your level of engagement. We don’t force customers into a one-size-fits-all relationship. Some customers value distributed research, while others prefer to point us in the direction that they’re looking. We think our best relationships are a two-way street, with plenty of push-and-pull. We offer several different levels of engagement, so that you can work with us in the ways that best fit your needs.